A lot of people, and small business people especially, like to confuse what marketing is. Many people assume that it’s advertising, the creation of ideas. That’s fun, and many people like that. Who doesn’t want to think of something funny or cool and have it go viral? That seems like a core value in humans in general, the need to socials or connect through socialization.
BUT marketing itself is a lot more…boring, in a way. The ideas and the viral and funny stuff only goes so far. You need a way to track it, define it, and figure out what it is and how you capture it. Like anything else in life, delving into the deeper details allows you to truly understand and fine tune the message that you get to your customers, and who your customers are, and what they actually like.
Most small business people start out with their products. I can make x, and I need people to buy x. That’s nice, that’s the basic plan for selling anything. But knowing who wants to buy it, why the want to buy it, how many they want to buy, and who else wants to buy is the key to long term goals. A business is in the habit of gaining customers, so knowing exactly who to market to, and then creating those funny advertisements to them is the best way to spend your dollars. AND then tracking how many people watched, engaged, liked, tagged, etc, is also part of marketing. Because it gives you the idea of what your doing, and how people are paying attention to it.
If you sell yarn, it doesn’t make sense to make a video with extreme action in it. But it may make sense to appeal to a younger base if you have products that the younger base will enjoy. So making yarn “hip” and “edgy” and then targeting those demographics in their own environment is the key to gaining new customers in the areas that you want. Tracking those metrics are important for forecasting as well. Buying up the bulk load and stocking products for seasonal and timing issues are just as important as knowing where exactly to sell them. It can also help you define if you need an online shop, or a physical presence as well, because knowing that more people buy in a certain location is better than just purely testing a pop-up shop, especially in COVID days.
These are all the things that the big companies are doing, and dedicating divisions to ensure that their products remain front and center and gain traction in the world that they sell in. If you want to see growth, you need to give this some thought as well.
